The present invention is directed towards a control circuit for controlling the intensity of a group of lights. More particularly, the present invention is directed towards a control circuit for selectively raising or lowering the intensity of a group of lights at a desired fade rate. In the preferred embodiment, the present invention can vary the intensity of a group of lights from blackout to peak intensity or from peak intensity to blackout in anywhere between one second and sixty minutes time. While various prior art devices have been designed to accomplish essentially the same result, they usually rely on complex gear systems, to effectuate the timed fade from one intensity level to another. Two obvious disadvantages of such prior art systems are their unreliability due to mechanical failure and their great bulk. Perhaps their most significant limitation, however, lies in the fact the number of discrete fade ratios which can be supplied by such prior art devices is highly restricted. That is, since the motor and gears provide a fixed fade time which can be varied only by mechanically changing the gear ratio, the number of discrete fade rates is restricted to the number of discrete gear ratios provided by each gear box system. As such, the advantage of the present invention resides not merely in its reliability, compactness and quickness of response, but its ability to provide an almost continuous range of fade rates. In addition, the available range of fade rates can be significantly increased by merely providing additional counter circuits to decrease the frequency of the clock pulses generated by the pulse generator.
For the purpose of illustrating the invention, there is shown in the drawings a form which is presently preferred; it being understood, however, that this invention is not limited to the precise arrangements and instrumentalities shown.